Israel plans full Lebanon withdrawal within days

JERUSALEM, Sep 20 (Reuters) Israel intends to complete a troop withdrawal from Lebanon by the weekend, Defence Minister Amir Peretz said today.

''This is our intent, we definitely want to complete it,'' Peretz said when asked by reporters about comments yesterday by army chief Dan Halutz that Israeli forces would quit Lebanon by the Jewish New Year, which starts on Friday.

''We hope there won't be any mishaps in coordinating with the Lebanese army and the international forces, and that everything will go according to the planned timetable,'' Peretz said in remarks during a tour of southern Israel.

Israeli forces have been gradually pulling out from territory the army captured during the month-long war with the Hizbollah guerilla group that ended in a ceasefire on August 14.

''If all goes without a hitch, to the satisfaction of all sides, the working assumption is the IDF (army) will leave all the areas it controls by the Jewish New Year holiday,'' a parliamentary spokesman quoted Halutz as telling legislators yesterday. ''If not, it would be delayed another week.'' Israel went to war after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a July 12 cross-border raid. Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, two-thirds of them soldiers, were killed in the conflict.

Halutz said meetings involving the Israeli army, the United Nations and Lebanon were taking place to coordinate the pullout.

Earlier this week the army said it had withdrawn from more than 80 per cent of territory conquered during the war, handing it over to UN peacekeepers under UNIFIL II, an expanded version of the original peacekeeper garrison in the area.

Military officials have declined to say how many Israeli troops are still in southern Lebanon. Israeli forces maintain control of a narrow strip of land inside the south.

Israeli and Lebanese officers discussed more Israeli troop withdrawals from south Lebanon at their latest UN-hosted meeting, but a UN spokesman could not confirm today when the pullout would be complete.

UNIFIL spokesman Alexander Ivanko said only that ''some progress was made'' at yesterday's liaison meeting at the force's headquarters in the Lebanese coastal border village of Naqoura.

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